{"id":389999,"date":"2025-09-01T19:29:21","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T19:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/389999\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T19:29:21","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T19:29:21","slug":"telling-the-public-the-facts-about-the-common-understanding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/389999\/","title":{"rendered":"Telling the public the facts about the Common Understanding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, Nick Thomas-Symonds, Minister for the Constitution and European Union Relations, gave a speech for The Spectator on the EU Reset in the Library Room in the Unherd Club in Westminster. I wasn\u2019t able to attend, but you can find a transcript of the speech\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0or listen to it on\u00a0YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thomas Symonds is a lawyer and historian who has written books on Harold Wilson and Clement Attlee. He began and ended his speech with incredibly misplaced quotes by Harold Wilson.<\/p>\n

To begin, Thomas-Symonds claimed that Wilson believed \u2018the key was honesty \u2013 telling the public the facts, not exaggerating\u2019 in relation to the debate about joining the European Economic Community in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

Thomas Symonds then ignored Wilson\u2019s advice and instead used the rest of his speech to lie about who would make the rules and be the arbiter of any transgressions in the EU reset; exaggerate the costs of trading with the EU; mislead the audience about the reductions in UK trade; distort the benefits to UK trade of allowing the EU to make the UK\u2019s food, farming, and agricultural regulations; and trivialise the detrimental impact on UK industry of adopting the EU\u2019s carbon emission and carbon border taxes.<\/p>\n

It was a soft soap speech to placate The Spectator audience about the EU Reset and reassure them that there was nothing to see here.<\/p>\n

Telling the public the facts<\/p>\n

While I acknowledge that it is challenging to explain the intricacies of trade data in a speech, Thomas-Symonds, a lawyer, agreed to the\u00a0Common Understanding<\/a>\u00a0with the EU in May, so he should understand the legal powers he has handed to the EU. You can read this document\u00a0here<\/a>. It is very clear about dispute resolution. Thomas-Symonds claimed in his speech that \u2018any dispute will go to international arbitration. It is not the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that has the final judgement.\u2019<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for Thomas-Symonds the words\u00a0International Arbitration\u00a0do not appear in the Common Understanding document, but the words\u00a0European Court of Justice\u00a0do, several times; the EU states in paragraph 29 that the ECJ will be the ultimate authority in any SPS Agreement disputes:<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot\"<\/p>\n

The ultimate authority of the ECJ in any dispute resolution is reiterated again in paragraph 43 regarding the UK\u2019s adoption of the EU\u2019s emission trading taxes and the application of the EU\u2019s carbon border adjustment mechanism taxes on UK imports:<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot\"<\/p>\n

Screenshot<\/p>\n

And let\u2019s be clear: all of the rules and regulations referred to in the Common Understanding are now, and will be in the future, European Union Laws. If the EU is to abide by new rules, they will be codified in EU legislation and thus subject to interpretation and enforcement by the European Court of Justice.<\/p>\n

Thomas-Symonds also falsely claims in his speech that \u2018[the UK]\u00a0will have decision-shaping rights when new EU policies are made and parliament will rightly have a say on those rules\u2019. However, the Common Understanding document clearly states in paragraphs 26 and 27, shown below, that\u00a0the UK would be required to adopt and immediately apply all relevant EU rules<\/strong>\u00a0on plant and animal health, food safety, consumer protection, animal welfare, pesticides, and organic products. At no point does it suggest that the EU would ever consider following the UK\u2019s agricultural, food, or trade regulations, despite the UK having more stringent animal welfare rules and a more favourable approach towards pesticides and modern agricultural processes such as gene editing.<\/p>\n

\"image<\/p>\n

The EU has deigned to allow the UK to\u00a0\u2018contribute appropriately for a country that is not a member of the European Union\u2019, but the Common Understanding does not say what the EU would consider to be an\u00a0appropriate contribution from a non-member. As the UK\u2019s \u2018contributions\u2019 were generally voted down when we were full EU members, the EU is even less likely to accept UK contributions now that it is a non-member.<\/p>\n

I suspect the only contribution from the UK that the EU cares about is a financial one. The demand for financial contributions from the UK to the EU appears three times in the Common Understanding document agreed upon by Thomas-Symonds: first in the discussion of the youth mobility scheme (paragraph 14), which includes mobility for \u2018studies\u2019 meaning EU students attending UK universities, then in relation to the SPS Agreement (paragraph 32, shown below), and again concerning the Emissions Trading Scheme (paragraph 42). However, Thomas-Symonds\u2019 speech did not mention any of these financial demands.<\/p>\n

\"image<\/p>\n

If the UK is truly to have an input into the EU\u2019s regulation-making process of the \u2018common SPS Area\u2019 as Thomas-Symonds claimed in his speech, why does the Common Understanding agreement, signed by Thomas-Symonds in May, only mention a payment from the UK to the EU for the \u2018EU\u2019s policy work\u2019<\/strong>? The lack of a fee makes it obvious that there will be no UK \u2018policy work\u2019; this was just another lie to placate his audience. Thomas-Symonds should have followed Wilson\u2019s advice and been honest: The UK will adopt all EU regulations. Without discussion or debate. End of.<\/p>\n

Subjugation wearing trade agreement clothing<\/p>\n

Although Thomas-Symonds is a lawyer, he may not have read any trade agreements, so his claim that \u2018all international trade agreements involve shared rules\u2019 may not be a lie but rather a reflection of his limited knowledge of trade agreements. However, his limited knowledge of trade agreements is also why he should not be in charge of negotiating the UK-EU Reset, and probably why the Common Understanding agreed by Thomas-Symonds is not a mutually beneficial arrangement but a subjugation of the UK by the EU.<\/p>\n

Thomas-Symonds should know that trade agreements do not involve \u2018shared rules\u2019. More importantly, he should have noticed that the Common Understanding does not include \u2018shared rules\u2019 either; it requires the UK to blindly follow EU rules. And to do so immediately.<\/p>\n

The UK has trade agreements with 72 countries, none of which require the UK to follow the other Party\u2019s laws in its domestic legislation. Only exported goods must meet the other Party\u2019s standards, just as imported goods from that Party must meet UK standards. Trade agreements are not instruments of legal subordination. Even in the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), the UK does not follow EU laws. Both the UK and the EU must avoid significant divergence in areas such as labour laws or state aid; however, this is enforced through rebalancing mechanisms rather than through legal adoption.<\/p>\n

It is strange that Thomas-Symonds, a lawyer, would praise the UK\u2019s trade agreements with India and the US in his speech and hope that his audience would somehow believe that the UK had adopted both countries\u2019 rules in order to reach those agreements. The man on the Clapham Omnibus would know that this could not possibly be true. I wonder how many in the Spectator audience also recognised this absurdity or realised that Thomas-Symonds must have been lying?<\/p>\n

Thomas-Symonds also conflates EU membership with a trade agreement, claiming the UK-EU TCA was \u2018the first trade agreement in history to make it harder to trade\u2019. EU membership was much more than just a trade agreement, which is why the UK voted to leave the EU, while also signing a comprehensive trade agreement with the EU. We liked the trade but hated the loss of sovereignty.<\/p>\n

Despite Wilson\u2019s claim about honesty being the key, membership of the EEC, and later the EU, was always sold to the UK population by politicians from both parties as simply joining a trade organisation, but the EEC\/EU was always about European countries giving up their sovereignty to allow unelected Commissioners to make homogeneous rules for all EU members, regardless of whether it suited their cultures or their economy.<\/p>\n

Lies, damned lies, and trade statistics<\/p>\n

However, Thomas-Symonds\u2019 speech is not just full of lies that obscure the UK\u2019s legal subjugation by the EU; he has also employed clever juxtapositions to mislead his audience about UK trade.<\/p>\n

Thomas-Symonds claimed \u2018the 2020 deal [wiped out] our small businesses\u2019, followed by \u2018Since 2022, over 16,000 businesses have stopped exporting altogether\u2019. His audience may have thought that the \u20182020 deal\u2019 is connected to the \u201816,000 businesses who has stopped exporting\u2019 since 2022, but neither appears to be true.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0ONS publishes information about UK trading companies by size<\/a>, based on the number of employees. The most surprising aspect of the ONS report is the low number of companies in the UK that trade with any country, but this is not related to Brexit and was also the case before the EU referendum in 2016. (See the table below)<\/p>\n

However, despite Brexit, more companies of all sizes were trading with the EU in 2022 than in 2019, the year preceding Brexit. Small businesses, those with 10 to 49 employees, exporting to the EU, have increased from 8,000 companies in 2019 to 10,300 companies in 2022. While the number of micro companies, those with less than 10 employees, exporting to the EU has increased from 5000 to 6,700. These companies have not been wiped out, as Thomas-Symonds claims, as shown in the table below.<\/p>\n

\"image<\/p>\n

And if 16,000 companies have stopped exporting altogether, then that isn\u2019t apparent in the ONS Figures for companies exporting to all regions, shown below.<\/p>\n

\"image<\/p>\n

If any UK company, large or small, has been \u2018wiped out\u2019 since 2019, it is much more likely to be because of:<\/p>\n